Who could it be now...

Not everyone gets to do a photo shoot with Santa, and that's exactly what I got to do recently. My boys were pretty happy about that. My oldest son thinks I'm famous because I did photos of the man with the big white beard. At any rate, It was really cool to shoot this assignment of Gerald Lovett for Arbutus Magazine. Gerald, also known as Grizz, is such a nice guy, even though we spent almost two hours working on this shoot, the time just flew by. Having the cover shot and the centre spread for this issue of Arbutus magazine was icing on the cake.

Grizz rides motorcycles and we had the idea of shooting some photos of him and his bike but his bike was apart in his shop so we decided to do the photos at his friend's house, with a bike that used to belong to Grizz. When Grizz told me the bike was red I was sold on the idea.

I really wanted to focus on capturing the character of Grizz so I spent a bit of time doing some tight headshots.

And this was the setup. Nothing too crazy. A couple lights in softboxes and a fold up backdrop. And of course, my wooden crate - seriously indispensable!

Of course Santa has a workshop! Lucky for me, Grizz's friend had a workshop in his garage!

Hopefully you'll get a chance to read this issue of Arbutus magazine. The story of Grizz is a great piece of writing by Ashley Degraaf - a tear jerker from one friend's account. It's so rewarding to meet people like this and see the story put to print. I'm used to meeting cool people and taking their photos, but the story I hear is usually just heard by me.

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